My concern with a USL1 franchise is that it wouldn't be seen as "major league." It is another lower class team that no one outside of franchise cities cares about. Does that really matter? I don't know - but it would be a concern.
Well, technically at least, USL-1 is not a "minor league" in the sense that they are not "farm clubs" for MLS teams. They consider themselves an "alternative league" to MLS.... sounds like a hard sell, I know, but these teams traditionally do well in the US Open Cup, an annual round robin national tourney that includes all the MLS clubs. One intriguing option would be a Tulsa team partly owned by or affiliated with a foreign club-- the new team in Austin is affiliated with Stoke City..... Tulsa and?... Glasgow Celtic?.... Sheffield United?.... Queens Park Rangers?
Local Ownership and USLhttp://portlandtimbersmls.blogspot.com/2008/01/local-ownership-and-usl.html I do think Tulsa has the demographics to support a soccer franchise of some kind. Of course, as it stands the University of Tulsa has a highly ranked soccer program and plays other highly ranked teams and no one, I mean NO ONE attends those games - which are usually free. So maybe soccer as a spectator sport isn't quite right (or maybe TU sucks at promoting it?).
Well, college soccer is about as much a spectator sport as... college tennis? Creighton has its own soccer stadium but really doesn't draw much beyond 3,000 fans per game.
http://www.gocreighton.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=1000&ATCLID=1569359 Creighton ranked third in the nation in overall attendance in 2007, while it finished fourth in average attendance last year. The Jays brought in 34,308 fans for an average of 2,639 per game. CU’s match against UCLA last year drew a school-record 5,812 fans, while two other 2007 crowds ranked in the CU top-10.
The Hurricane Track&Field/Soccer stadium is lucky to fit much more than 1,000 fans. The games I've gone to have had decent crowds-- in the hundreds... why not have a doubleheader at the old ballpark with TU-SMU at 6 or 6:30pm, then a USL-1 game against Rochester at 8 or 8:30pm.... or a doubleheader with the Tulsa Spirit semi-pro women's team playing Mexico.... raise the profile, which would be a WIN-WIN, right?
Bah! I appreciate your passion for this issue Rufnex. But I'm not so much concerned about the soccer as I am about using the fairgrounds wisely. If a team would bring some activity to that area and use that space I'd be all for it.
Well, that's just it. If Cabela's is going to build some monstrous multi-million dollar doo-hickey, I suppose they would hold most of the cards. But I don't understand why an 11,000-seat stadium needs to be destroyed when it looks alot nicer than the stands across the way at Fair Meadows-- I mean, who bets on the horsies anymore when we have state-of-the-art casinos ringing the city?
When the franchise development guy from USL-1 tells me they want to expand "strategically" and that Tulsa is "a market we want to be in," I take notice of that kind of interest. By 2011, USL-1 will have lost all three of their teams in the pacific northwest to MLS (Seattle, Portland, Vancouver).... It's kinda like when TU became a member of C-USA only after Louisville, Cincy and S. Florida bolted to the Big East.
Heck, I don't mind if they use the name
Roughnecks or not... have a "name the team" contest and see where it goes....